One Week in Africa

East London Team
Jlife Zambia and McKinney Team

Last week, Andrew and I spent the week in East London with the group from McKinney. Andrew actually stayed longer to help Bethany Anderson get settled in better. Andrew could relate to first days in a new city and could help her navigate around the city and help her find a car or a place to live. Right now she is living with Leo O'Connors parents. Andrew was staying with Leo and his wife Linda. They have the most adorable son, Thomas. He is a little pudgy blonde haired boy. Oh, cute.

Anyway, Monday it rained so we couldn't paint. We took the time to pray around inside and outside the church and Medical clinic which included the actual clinic, hospice building, daycare and work-for-all. The work-for-all trained ladies to sew and men to go out and do mechanical jobs, mow, and any other jobs they could train them to do. Their goal is to train the ladies for 6 months in sewing and business and then send them out having paid for a sewing machine and a starter kit to be able to have a business. Then they are able to bring back their stuff to the Work-for-all to sell their stuff to groups like us or at fairs or other places. The daycare has about 40-50 kids that have HIV/AIDS or are affected by HIV/AIDS. It is a safe haven for them to go to during the day while their parents work instead of staying in the townships. The clinich sees about 3000 patients a months which is about 100 patients a day and are continously getting new patients each day. The ministry of the church seems to be doing great, but the church itself seems to have needed prayer. The sermon Sunday night was on prayer and fasting which we found to be of the Lord's timing. Tuesday morning we started in on the painting and we scraped and painted all one wall and building for the rest of the week in the morning. In the afternoon we went to a school the church is trying to reach out to. That was quite interesting. Terry Brown and I had the older specials class which mainly comprised of kids with major home issues along with behavior issues. Some of the kids were right where they were suppose to be mentally and intellectually, but some were very far behind. You could tell right away the ones with learning disabilities, or at least I could. They all had BIG hearts and just wanted attention and a hug. In some way or another they just wanted to be loved. It broke my heart that these 6th and 7th graders just needed somebody. Yes, at some points they were just 6th and 7th grade punks, but they were just babies on the inside just needing to be loved. It was hard to leave the school for me. I just know that our teacher, Ms. Beiling, loved those kids and expected great things from them. She was their mom, teacher, counselor, taxi driver, and whatever else they needed for that day. She was amazing. There were other teachers that way as well. Andrew was in the younger specials class and I was so proud of him. He is so good with kids. He is straight forward and lets them know what he expects and his presence as a man goes so far with them. Most of them have one or more parents missing from their lives. Which is a reason it was hard for me to leave. I wanted to take all of them with me. Punks or not, I didn't care. Well, that was our week in a nutshell, Andrew will be back tonight.

David has gone to Pretoria for some meetings and interviews. We have 20 internationals and about 25 South Africans that have interview for "team" that starts in Janurary next year. This is what is know as the intern program. They train from Jan. to Apr. then the International go back to their countries by themselves or in teams depending on where they are from and then the South Africans are made up into teams and go into a church and work with the youth and train youth leaders from Apr to Dec. The hope is that when they leave they have left leadership in the youth that will carry on with the ministry. This is what Andrew is going to do next year. He will go with the South Africans. He is doing amazingly well. He has grown up so much in the last 3 months. The Lord is using him already among people in our church here, Acts Community and where we live as well with the staff. He fits right in as well as Matthew and Grace.

The Zambia group went and built part of the Jlife Zambia training center as well as did eye exams to give out reading glasses. They had a wonderful exhausting time working with David Malonga who is the Jlife Zambia country leader as well as Ephraim and some other guys. They have encourage our team in Zambia tremendously. Also, by building part of the training center and serving the people of Zambia they have effective the lives of the African people for eternity. This obviously is HUGE!

There is no way to tell by numbers or money or any other tangible things the effect the group from McKinney has had on our people here in Africa. We thank the Lord daily for our people in Texas and around the world that life us up in prayer and support us through prayers and money and cards and emails and just everything little thing that cannot be named. We are so blessed as a family here. We, the Evens, are so encouraged and blessed by your presence this last week and the support we have from each one of you. The prayer in Phillipians 1 has a whole new meaning for me. Thanks for everything!! We serve a great and wonderful God and it was amazing to serve with you this last week!!